CHICAGO –
A few minutes before he publicly unveiled the facelift and other changes
that will be applied to the 2008 Dodge Dakota, the head of product planning
for the Chrysler Group was asked about the future of such mid-size pickups.

“What’s the next generation?” Frank Klegon, executive
vice president of product development for the Chrysler Group wondered
aloud, giving himself time to formulate his answer to a question he’s
heard before, a question that certainly has been much discussed within
his own department.

Well, he said, “we’re seeing change,” change in the
way such trucks are being used and thus, he added, his product development
team is considering changes needed to keep its product relevant in the
marketplace. Possibly very significant changes.

For example, Klegon continued, while mid-size pickups such as the Dakota
have been and continue to be built on traditional body-on-frame architecture
that could be subject to change because many of the people who buy such
trucks aren’t using them so much for traditional pickup truck work-related
purposes as to meet the needs of their active lifestyles.

Without making
any commitments about what the next Dakota may or may not be, Klegon wonders
about the appeal of a vehicle that offers a pickup-style bed but also
“does other things.”

Though he didn’t list them, it would seem that such “other
things” could include a more car-like ride and handling and creature
comforts as well as car-like (or at least crossover-like) fuel-economy.

“That,” he added, “has our eye.”

Dodge has been known to shake up the pickup truck market before. Consider
the redo of the full-size Ram with its aggressive, semi-style front fenders,
or when Dodge bolted from the compact class by making the Dakota a larger
and thus mid-size vehicle.

Other automakers responded by making their own compacts larger (well,
all but Ford, which basically retreated the still-compact Ranger to fleet
sales status).

Mid-sized pickups offered buyers a goodly degree of truck capability
but still in a package that could fit in the garage or a standard parking
space.

However, mid-size pickups were never more than a nice niche. It’s
one thing to enlarge, and quite another to be large, and when it comes
to pickup trucks, full-size remains both large and in charge, especially
among the domestic automakers, who are much more dependent on their big
trucks to generate profit, in part because they don’t have cars
that sell in numbers like, say, the Toyota Camry or Honda Civic.